The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield

[friendly_iconoclast]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html

During a live Web chat in late January, National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden explained one of the least discussed dangers of bulk collection. By indiscriminately sweeping up the call records and the international communications of Americans, the government has the ability to engage in retroactive investigation, or mining the historical data of targets for any evidence of suspicious, illegal or simply embarrassing activities. It is a disturbing capability that should make even those fully convinced of their own propriety to think twice before uttering out loud, “What do I have to fear if I have nothing to hide?”

But there’s another danger that Snowden didn’t mention that’s inherent in the government’s having easy access to the voluminous data we produce every day: It can imply guilt where there is none. When investigators have mountains of data on a particular target, it’s easy to see only the data points that confirm their theories — especially in counterterrorism investigations when the stakes are so high — while ignoring or downplaying the rest. There doesn’t have to be any particular malice on the part of investigators or analysts, although prejudice no doubt comes into play, just circumstantial evidence and the dangerous belief in their intuition. Social scientists refer to this phenomenon as confirmation bias, and when people are confronted with data overload, it’s much easier to weave the data into a narrative that substantiates what they already believe. Criminologist D. Kim Rossmo, a retired detective inspector of the Vancouver Police Department, was so concerned about confirmation bias and the investigative failures it causes that he warned police officers in Police Chief magazine to always be on guard against it. “The components of confirmation bias,” he wrote, “include failure to seek evidence that would disprove the theory, not utilizing such evidence if found, refusing to consider alternative hypotheses and not evaluating evidence diagnosticity.”...


....On March 11, 2004, Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists coordinated a massive bombing of the Madrid commuter train system during the morning rush hour, killing 193 people and wounding approximately 1,800. Two latent fingerprints recovered during the investigation on a bag of detonators by the Spanish National Police (SNP) were shared with the FBI through Interpol. When the prints were run through the bureau’s database, it returned 20 possible matches for one of the fingerprints, one of whom was Brandon Mayfield. A former U.S. Army platoon leader, Mayfield was now an attorney specializing in child custody, divorce and immigration law in Portland, Ore. His prints were in the FBI system because of Mayfield’s military service as well as an arrest two decades earlier because of a misunderstanding. The charges were later dropped.

Despite finding that Mayfield’s print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Under the one discrepancy rule, the FBI lab should have concluded Mayfield did not leave the print found in Madrid — a conclusion the SNP reached and repeatedly communicated to the FBI. The FBI’s Portland field office, however, used that fingerprint match to begin digging into Mayfield’s background. Certain details of the attorney’s life convinced the agents that they had their man. Mayfield had converted to Islam after meeting his wife, an Egyptian. He had represented one of the Portland Seven, a group of men who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight for al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces in a child custody case. He also worshipped at the same mosque as the militants. In the aftermath of 9/11, these innocent associations and relationships, however tangential, were transformed by investigators into evidence that Mayfield wasn’t a civic-minded American, but a bloodthirsty terrorist intent on destroying the West.

For the 'tl;dr' crowd: It wasn't his fingerprint, and he had nothing to do with the bombings

The declassified FBI report about this entire fiasco can be read here:

http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/exec.pdf

[struggle4progress]

1. We extensively discussed it here at DU while it happened

The FBI was very eager to prove how effective it could be in helping Spain investigate the bombings; Spain quickly became less and less interested in FBI help

Spanish police question fingerprints
Saturday, May 8, 2004 · Last updated 12:53 p.m. PT
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MADRID, Spain -- The newspaper El Pais reported Saturday that Spanish investigators have serious doubts as to whether the fingerprint found on a plastic bag tied to March 11 explosions on commuter trains is that of Portland-area lawyer Brandon Mayfield ...

Portland man arrested in connection with Madrid terror attacks released
Edited on Thu May-20-04 07:43 PM by maddezmom
By Rukmini Callimachi
The Associated Press
PORTLAND — Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield, arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings two weeks ago, was released from federal custody today.
His release came soon after Spanish officials said fingerprints found on a bag near the bombing site in Spain were that of an Algerian. U.S. authoritities had previously said prints on the bag, which contained detonators similar to those used in the March 11 bombings, were Mayfield's ...

Federal Court Dismisses Case Against Mayfield
PORTLAND, Ore. - A federal court threw out the case Monday against an Oregon lawyer arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings, citing a fingerprint-identification error by the FBI ...

FBI apologizes to man linked to Madrid bombing
PORTLAND, May 24 (Reuters) - A Muslim attorney from Oregon, held for two weeks, often manacled and chained, as a material witness in the March 11 train bombing in Spain, was cleared on Monday with an apology from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation ...

FBI Ignored Spain's Doubt on Fingerprint

Spain and U.S. at Odds on Mistaken Terror Arrest
Portland, Ore., June 3 — Two weeks after United States authorities cleared a Portland-area lawyer of any connection to the deadly terrorist bombing in Madrid, high-level Spanish law enforcement officials who were also involved in the investigation are challenging key aspects of the United States' version of events in the case, touching off a muddy dispute between the two allies and painting a portrait of F.B.I. officials who repeatedly rejected evidence that they had the wrong man ...

Judge Rules Mayfield Can Sue Government

US will pay $2 million and apologize for terror arrest
Brandon Mayfield, a Portland attorney arrested after the 2004 Madrid train bombings, has reportedly settled out of court for $2 million and an official apology ...

[friendly_iconoclast]

2. I know- I reposted the AJA article in light of Snowden's revelations

Confirmation bias combined with the sheer mass of surveillance 'product' means
that TPTB can produce all sorts of 'evidence' to demonstrate that ANYONE is
a suspect...

[struggle4progress]

3. Not only is confirmation bias real, there's also more than one case in the books of deliberate

falsification of fingerprint evidence to obtain a conviction

We probably also agree on the potential dangers posed by mass telephone call record collection

But false accusations, and crime lab shenanigans, can and do occur, independent of mass surveillance, and the Brandon Mayfield case doesn't really shed any light on the NSA stories